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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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Copyrights should have never been extended longer than 5 years in the first place, either remove draconian copyright laws or outlaw LLM style models using copyrighted material, corpos can't have both.
Bro, what? Some books take more than 5 years to write and you want their authors to only have authorship of it for 5 years? Wtf. I have published books that are a dozen years old and I'm in my mid-30s. This is an insane take.
The one I thought was a good compromise was 14 years, with the option to file again for a single renewal for a second 14 years. That was the basic system in the US for quite a while, and it has the benefit of being a good fit for the human life span--it means that the stuff that was popular with our parents when we were kids, i.e. the cultural milieu in which we were raised, would be public domain by the time we were adults, and we'd be free to remix it and revisit it. It also covers the vast majority of the sales lifetime of a work, and makes preservation and archiving more generally feasible.
5 years may be an overcorrection, but I think very limited terms like that are closer to the right solution than our current system is.
Exactly! That's what we had originally in the US, and I thought that was more than fair. I would add that the renewal should only be awarded if they can prove they need more time to recoup R&D costs and it's still available commercially.
So yeah, something in the neighborhood of 10-15 years w/ a renewal sounds totally fair to me. Let them keep the trademarks and whatnot as long as they're in use (e.g. you shouldn't be able to make a new entry in a series w/o the author's permission for the marks, but fanfic that explicitly mentions it's not original/canon would probably fall under fair use), but the actual copyright should expire very quickly.
You don't have to stop selling when a book becomes public domain, publishers and authors sell public domain/commons books frequently, it's just you won't have a monopoly on the contents after the copyright expires.
how about: tiered copy rights?
after 5 years, you lose some copyright but not all?
it’s a tricky one but impoverished people should still be able to access culture…
What does that even mean though? Like, you would retain the ability to sell and modify it but not a monopoly on free distribution?
I think 10-15 years, i.e. the original copyright act in the US (14 years) is totally fair, and allow a one-time renewal if you can prove it's still available for purchase and losing copyright would impact your livelihood or something.
i left it open ended like that because there’s a lot of options….
i’d probably start with selling, like after 5 years people are welcome to copy it and distribute it but not sell it…
but i mean, a lot of variations are possible….
We'll just having some copyright look like?
Probably allowing everything but producing reproductions.
Basically they could use the ideas from the book and whatnot to do whatever. But they couldn't just print duplicates with a different cover and sell them for cheaper.
I suppose it would encourage George Martin to get a move on. Otherwise you could set stories in his universe before he finished writing the third book. I still think 5 years is too short though.
And how do you think that's going to go when suddenly the creator needs to compete with massive corps?
The reason copyright exists is for the same reason patents do: to protect the little guy.
Just because corporations abuse it doesn't mean we throw it out.
It shouldn't be long, but it sure should be longer than 5 years.
Or maybe 5 years unless it's an individual.
Oh so like the music industry where every artist retains full rights to their work and the only 3 big publishers definitely don't force them to sell all their rights leaving musicians with basically nothing but touring revenue? Protecting the little guy like that you mean?
Or maybe protecting the little guy like how 5 tech companies own all the key patents required for networking, 3d graphics, and digital audio? And how those same companies control social media so if you are any kind of artist you are forced to hustle nonstop on their platforms for any hope if reaching an audience with your work? I'm sure all those YouTube creators feel very protected.
If you actually believe this is still true, I've got a bridge to sell ya'.
This hasn't been true since the '70s, at the latest.
The original 14-year duration w/ an optional renewal is pretty fair IMO. That's long enough that the work has likely lost popularity, but not so long that it's irrelevant. Renewals should be approved based on need (i.e. I'm currently living off the royalties).
The current copyright term in the US is utterly atrocious.
Oh, we should also consider copyright null and void once it's no longer available commercially for a "reasonable" price. As in, if I can't go buy the book or movie today for a similar price to the original launch (or less), then you should lose copyright protections.